It was the first email in my list Monday morning: “We counted the vote for the first time when Zachary Taylor won the 1848 presidential election.” From there, the note from the Associated Press stated they would be working long hours on Election Night to gather results from “more than 5,000 electoral reporting units across the U.S.: the towns of New England, the parishes of Louisiana and thousands of counties in all corners of the country where election officials tabulate the vote, and our network of journalists work to get us the count as quickly as possible”. With constant bombast and the almost gleeful upending and scorching of norms at every chance in our political process, it felt good to read something attached to the way our nation had so long operated in past elections.
The opening pages of Teddy White’s famed Making Of The President 1960 open with a flyover view of the nation and the electorate’s voting habits hour by hour on Election Day. He described a country whose political character seemed to change with the passing hours: the early returns from the small, predominantly Republican towns of New England, the rural precincts of Kansas and Kentucky, and finally the great industrial cities of the East, where Democratic voters begin to transform the electoral picture. He used words to paint an image of us in a powerful meditation on American democracy and the extraordinary responsibility entrusted to the electorate. I first read the book in high school, and this morning on Election Eve, I am reminded of its simplicity and its grandeur.
More than six decades later, that faith is being tested as never before. But I argue we need to keep that faith.
Over the past decade, we have seen that the political and governing institutions that have sustained our democracy are too often treated as obstacles to be conquered rather than foundations to be preserved. No one reading a column on this matter needs a reminder that our democracy has never been a perfect undertaking. We know our stated values contain contradictions compared with what we do as a people. We know the challenges constructed by those who place their own ambitions above the common good. Through it all, however, one thing remains solid. The American citizen has the right and the responsibility to determine their own future at the ballot box.
In just a few hours, the promise will be renewed from coast to coast. This is our time to reclaim our place in the democratic process, to weigh the choices before us, and to make our voices heard through the most fundamental instrument of self-government. White understood that the drama of Election Day was not merely the spectacle of competing political organizations or the suspense of the final returns. It was the accumulated expression of millions of individual decisions, each one made by a citizen who believed that his or her vote mattered.
That is the lesson we must hold to our hearts as we vote on Election Day. This year’s noise will fade. The political personalities who occupy our attention today will pass from the scene. What will remain for the history books is the enduring question of whether we, as citizens, were willing to preserve the democratic inheritance entrusted to us.
The answer begins at the ballot box.
As the AP wrote in the email, “No matter how Nov. 3 unfolds, you can trust in our team to do what AP has done for 178 years: counting the vote and calling races accurately and without fear or favor.”
Make sure you’re one of the votes AP counts, too.
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